AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You mean thirteen,” said Reeva.
“No, it’s changed.”
“Yeah, the priest can’t do the kriya on the thirteenth day,” added Jaya. “He has, like, a prior commitment or something. So he said he’d do it on the fourteenth day instead. Apparently it’s not a major issue.”
“Yep, because the soul is going to wait an extra twenty-four hours to depart just to suit his schedule,” said Sita. “Utter bollocks in my opinion.”
“So... we’re going to be together for an extra day?” asked Reeva.
“Yep. Lucky us,” said Sita.
Reeva sighed. She knew it was only one day, but when she was with her sisters, every second felt like a year. “Right. And what do all these people think of us? Did they know he had daughters?”
“They knew we existed and were in London,” said Sita. “He clearly hadn’t pretendedwewere dead. Which seems to be a first in our family.”
Reeva wrinkled her brow. “Okay, but what did they think about our relationship with Dad? Did they think we had one, or did they know we didn’t know about him?”
Jaya shrugged. “I guess the first. They were all like, ‘Oh, you must be so busy in London! Your dad would be so proud of you if he could see you now.’ ”
“I get the sense he pretended we had a normalish relationship,” explained Sita. “Only he made us out to be shit daughters. You know, selfish and too busy with our lives to come visit him.”
“So like Mum then,” said Reeva drily.
Sita snorted, then cleared her throat. “Yeah. Well. We went along with it, to not make things awkward. What’s another lie after thirty-odd years of them?”
Reeva nodded slowly. “And did they know anything about Mum or his relationship with her?”
Jaya shook her head. “Nope. I mean, they know we have one, who lives in London. But they don’t seem to know it’s Saraswati, the famous singer. A few of the women asked how our mum was doing, as though she was sick or something. Who knows what Dad told them.”
“This is crazy,” burst out Reeva. “All these lies. It’s so dramatic. Everyone in Mum’s world thinks Dad’s dead. And everyone in Dad’s world has no idea who Mum is. They’re acting like they’re mafia overlords.”
Jaya nodded seriously. “I already considered that, but we’d know if Mum was a major criminal; there’s no way she’d be able to not boast about it.”
Reeva turned to Sita. “What about this Satya Auntie? Surely she knows everything. As his sister.”
Sita raised an eyebrow. “Because that automatically means they’re close?”
Reeva flushed.
“She doesn’t give much away,” said Jaya, oblivious. “I think she’s a Buddhist. We bonded over this unreal temple in Nepal—it’s socool, I’ll show you a photo later. I’ve never met someone else who’s been there before.”
“We need to get it out of her tonight,” said Sita firmly. “She’s coming an hour early to meet you. We figured you can do it.”
“Me?” Reeva looked at her sisters in alarm. “Can’t we... all do it?”
“You’re the lawyer,” Sita reminded her. “Not all of us managed to go to Cambridge. Shouldn’t you use that education?”
“Cambridge really wasn’t all that. And it’s not like you guys didn’t go to university!”
“Yeah, but we were never going to get intoOxbridge,” said Jaya. “Not after all the trauma we had, with Mum going off to India, and us getting abandoned at school.”
Reeva stared at her. “That happened to me too.”
“Yeah, but you’re older. It didn’t have the same impact on you as the oldest. That’s what my therapist says anyway. She thinks I had it worst because I was the youngest.”
“You’re three years younger than me,” cried Reeva. “And Sita’s only two ye—”
Sita interrupted. “Some of us got married and had children. I’ve been raising a family and supporting Nitin’s business. I didn’t exactly have the time to frolic around the world like Jaya or throw myself into my career like you.”
